The Culling will re-launch as free to play soon, but you can find it on Steam here. It's a bold strategy, and I'm hoping that they'll be able to recapture both that feel and the players required to support it. It was a very different experience to current battle royale shooters, focusing heavily on messy melee combat. I never got to play as much of The Culling as I would have liked, but I enjoyed my brief time with it. Xaviant will then use that as a new foundation for future development of the game, and taking The Culling free-to-play. Some time later, Xaviant plan to update The Culling's current incarnation (which left early access in October 2017) to play more like the original release.

Sometime this week, players who own The Culling will have access to an optional testing branch that rolls the game back to its original March 2016 state, when the game first launched as early access. Xaviant plan to return to basics, and rediscover what worked in the original, relatively well-received release of the game. 'It was not a game that you asked for', says Van Veld in the video below, as he reiterates the studio’s commitment to listening to their audience. Developers Xaviant Games have had their ups and downs in the battle. The Culling is a multiplayer battle-royal survival shooter, in which players step into the role of contestants in the most brutal game show ever devised The CullingIn The Culling, sixteen players, solo or in teams of two, are placed on a remote tropical island, and they then have 20 minutes to explore, scavenge items, craft weapons, build traps, and then hunt and kill each other.

Xaviant's decision to chase battle royale zeitgeist clearly didn't work out, and The Culling 2's 50-player, rifle-heavy design alienated fans of the scrappier, smaller first game. Game show style battle royale The Culling has returned in free-to-play form, allowing players to take in the jungle sights, bludgeon one another to death, and ruminate on the dystopic reality TV they’re making, all without paying for the privilege.

In a very awkward and apologetic video (which you can see below), Xaviant's director of operations John Van Veld announced the studio's plans to cull their ill-fated sequel, and return to supporting the Hunger Games-inspired The Culling once more. After its disastrous launch on July 10th, developers Xaviant have announced they intend to pull The Culling 2 from sale, refunding those who purchased it.

The culling free